Announcements 2010

27 September 2010: Today’s telescopes study the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum. Each part of the spectrum tells us different things about the Universe, giving us more pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle. The most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space have joined forces over the last decade in a unique observing campaign, known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS, which reaches across the spectrum and deep back into cosmic time. In a very special “multicast” video podcast, the ESOcast has joined forces with the Hubblecast, the Spitzer Space Telescope’s “Hidden Universe”, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s “Beautiful Universe” podcasts. Here we explore the collaboration of these great observatories on the GOODS project.

22 September 2010: ESO has just published issue 141 of its quarterly journal, The Messenger. This issue features a range of articles on subjects including: The difference between seeing and image quality A new coronagraph for NACO Water vapour above Paranal and La Silla Using APEX and VISTA to survey the Milky Way Studying distant galaxies with the ESO Remote Galaxy Survey ESO at the SPIE Symposium on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Plus other articles, including ‘solargraphs’ at ESO observatory sites — an intriguing way to take advantage of Chile’s clear skies.

17 September 2010: The movie Eyes on the Skies – 400 Years of Telescopic Discovery, initiated as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, has received the International Association for Media in Science’s Award at the TechFilm 2010 Festival. The award ceremony took place on 16 September 2010 at the National Technical Library in Prague. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 marked 400 years since Galileo Galilei first looked at the sky through a telescope, and Eyes on the Skies explores the many facets of the instrument that changed our view of the world we live in — its historical development, the scientific importance, the technological breakthroughs, and also the people behind it with their triumphs and failures. The Eyes on the Skies movie is presented by Dr J, aka Dr. Joe Liske from ESO, host of the Hubblecast and the ESOcast video podcasts. The DVD runs for 60 minutes and includes ...

9 September 2010: Using data from observations by two amateur astronomers (Anthony Wesley from Australia and Christopher Go from the Philippines), as well as data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and several other ground-based telescopes, scientists have found that the object seen entering the atmosphere of Jupiter on 3 June 2010 was a meteoroid roughly 8–13 m in diameter. The science paper is available on this link. This was the second of three recently observed Jupiter impacts discovered by amateurs, with the latest being reported on 20 August 2010 by the Japanese amateur astronomer Masayuki Tachikawa and confirmed by other Japanese amateurs. The video of that event can be watched at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkr86xKcwQ ESO’s VLT has also been used to study the aftermath of the first and very spectacular unexpected Jupiter impact that was also first spotted by Anthony Wesley on 19 July 2009. By using the VISIR instrument Leigh Fletcher and his collaborators ...

9 September 2010: New research carried out using ESO telescopes has, for the first time, allowed astronomers to reconstruct a detailed picture of the inner disc of matter around a young star. Stéphanie Renard of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Grenoble and colleagues used the ESO VLT Interferometer to probe the secrets of the star HD 163296. Young stars are surrounded by discs of dust and gas and scientists believe that it is in these discs that planets are born. Dusty grains in the disc stick to each other to make larger lumps that in turn also aggregate together. This growth is expected to continue until rocky bodies about the size of the Earth are formed. “The power of the VLT Interferometer to probe very fine details now allows us to see the inner region very close to the star where there is not expected to be any dust. The new images reveal the ...

7 September 2010: People living in the region of Antofagasta, in Chile, can now submit their own answers to the fundamental question “How big is the Universe?” The most original — as well as scientifically rigorous — answer will win an overnight stay at Cerro Paranal, home of the VLT, the world’s most advanced optical-infrared observatory. Nanoantofagasta is an innovative video competition organised by the Astronomy Outreach Centre Paranal Universidad Católica de Norte, in collaboration with Explora–Conicyt, the Antofagasta Railroad and the European Southern Observatory. Participants must send in a creative movie clip explaining how big the Universe is and lasting no more than two minutes. All video formats are accepted, including webcams and cell phone cameras. Only residents of the Antofagasta Region in Chile are eligible to win the prize.

7 September 2010: An ambitious project is now in progress at ESO to convert one of the four VLT Unit Telescopes into a fully adaptive telescope. The telescope’s 1.1-metre diameter secondary mirror is to be replaced by an extraordinary deformable mirror system that can be used with laser guide stars to correct for the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere and allow much sharper images to be achieved for all the telescope’s instruments. A major milestone in this quest has just been successfully passed with the completion and testing of an ultra-lightweight “reference optic”. The deformable secondary mirror has been contracted out by ESO to Microgate and ADS (Italy). Another supplier in the south of France, SESO, has just successfully delivered the reference optic, which is the heart of the secondary mirror system. This reference optic is an intricate, very rigid, but also exceptionally light structure made from Zerodur, a glass–ceramic made by ...

7 September 2010: Today at an event at JENAM 2010, the European Astronomical Society’ Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting, the book Postcards from the Edge of the Universe was launched. From sunspots to black holes, planets around other stars, supernovae and dark matter, Postcards from the Edge of the Universe unveils the mysteries of today’s research, looking at cutting-edge astronomy from around the world. Twenty-four frontline astronomers from all corners of the globe explain their science in accessible language in articles edited by veteran communicators Lee Pullen, Mariana Barrosa and Lars Lindberg Christensen. This book is based on the science carried out by a hand-picked selection of the best bloggers from the Cosmic Diary (www.cosmicdiary.org), one of the twelve Cornerstone projects of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. The contributions have been compiled into an edited anthology that gives a unique snapshot of contemporary astronomy. The four-page popular-science articles all have a ...

2 September 2010: During the next Café & Kosmos discussion evening on 6 September 2010, we will explore the fundamental structure of the Universe. Ordinary matter is made up of quarks and other elementary particles. But what do we find when looking even closer? String theory suggests that even these basic components are made up from even more fundamental objects, known as strings or quantum threads. This elegant theory manages to describe all known particles and the forces acting between them in a single framework. Professor Dr Ilka Brunner and Dr Marco Baumgartl (LMU Munich) will take us on a journey into the fascinating world of quantum strings. The series of Café & Kosmos discussions is organised jointly by ESO, the Excellence Cluster Universe and the Max-Planck Institutes for Physics, Astrophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics. The discussions take place on the first Monday of each month at Café Jasmin in Munich. After a brief ...

1 September 2010: ESO will have a significant presence at the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting (JENAM) in Lisbon, Portugal, during the week of 6–10 September 2010. JENAM is organised jointly each year by the European Astronomical Society (EAS) and one of the European national astronomical societies. This year’s JENAM will be the 18th Annual Meeting of EAS and the 20th Annual Portuguese Meeting of Astronomy and Astrophysics. On Monday 6 September EAS will inaugurate a new award to honour astronomers of outstanding scientific distinction, the Lodewijk Woltjer Lecture. The award is named after Lodewijk Woltjer, one of Europe’s outstanding astronomers of the second half of the twentieth century, and ESO Director General from 1975 till 1988. Under his leadership ESO established itself as one of the world’s leading astronomical institutes, and took the decision to build the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory. The inaugural lecture ...

26 August 2010: Asteroids are often thought of simply as big rocks orbiting the Sun, but they can have quite exciting lives. Small irregularly-shaped asteroids can be “spun up” to fast rotation rates by sunlight falling on them — much as the asymmetric profile of a propeller blade helps it to spin up in the wind. New results show that when asteroids spin fast enough, they can split into two pieces which then begin orbiting each other. Scientists call this process “rotational fission”. A new study released this week, led by Petr Pravec of the Astronomical Institute in the Czech Republic and involving many other institutions around the world, shows that many of these binary asteroids do not remain bound to each other but escape, forming two asteroids in very similar, but independent, orbits about the Sun where previously there was just one. Many such asteroid pairs have been discovered in recent years ...

24 August 2010: Astronomers using ESO instruments have discovered a remarkable extrasolar planetary system that has some striking similarities to our own Solar System. At least five planets are orbiting the distant Sun-like star HD 10180 and astronomers have tantalising evidence that two further worlds are present. The regular pattern of the planetary orbits is similar to that observed for our neighbouring planets. One of the new extrasolar worlds is believed to be only about 1.4 times the mass of the Earth, which would make it the least massive exoplanet ever found. To celebrate this dramatic discovery ESO has released a new video podcast, ESOcast 20. Entitled “Richest planetary system discovered”, it explains how these faraway planets were detected and exactly what we know about them. The video is available in many formats, including HD, and can also be watched or downloaded directly from iTunes.

12 August 2010: ESO is announcing today that important sections of its website have been translated into Icelandic, Polish and Turkish, allowing even more people to read about the latest scientific advances in their native language. ESO projects include the most advanced observing facility in the world, the Very Large Telescope, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and the planned European Extremely Large Telescope. Press releases and other important information are translated by the ESO Science Outreach Network (ESON), a group of individuals in several countries — including all the ESO member states as well other interested countries, including Iceland, Poland and Turkey — who serve as local contacts for the media and the general public in connection with ESO developments. ESON members are also useful contacts between the media and scientists in their respective regions, and as such are valuable ambassadors. "ESO is keen on sharing its results with as ...

12 August 2010: The European Southern Observatory has signed an agreement to license its cutting-edge laser technology to two commercial partners, Toptica Photonics and MPB Communications. This marks the first time that ESO has transferred patented technology and know-how to the private sector, offering significant opportunities both for business and for ESO. The two agreements will serve as test-cases for a new strategy for ESO’s Technology Transfer activities. ESO Raman fibre amplifier technology [1] was developed in-house for use in sodium laser guide stars. These form part of the adaptive optics systems that make ESO’s Very Large Telescope one of the world’s premier astronomical observatories. Since the technology also has wide potential beyond its use in adaptive optics, ESO has chosen to disseminate the technology by offering non-exclusive licensing deals to potentially interested commercial users. Technology transfer encourages the widespread use of ESO’s know-how, meaning that business benefits from a regulated access to ...

4 August 2010: A report on the latest progress in the design of the European Southern Observatory’s European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), to be built on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert, was one of the highlights of the Second International Seminar on Light Pollution held on 2–4 August at the Atacama Desert Museum in Antofagasta, Chile. The European Southern Observatory (ESO), in collaboration with the Chilean National Commission for Environment, Chilean universities and the Office for the Protection of the Quality of the Skies in the North of Chile, organised this event, supported by the Ruinas de Huanchaca Foundation, Antofagasta Municipality and the Chilean Astronomy Society, to promote the protection of dark skies as a scientific heritage. Experts from Europe, Brazil, Argentina and the USA discussed the benefits of improving the efficiency of urban lightning to reduce light pollution, and the resulting positive impact on the environment, energy consumption, economy and ...

3 August 2010: In a result just published astronomers have used several telescopes, including ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, to measure the properties of 117 Sun-like stars, of which 14 are known to host exoplanets. They measured the amount of the chemical element lithium in the stars, along with other stellar parameters. The researchers have found that the level of lithium in the stars studied decreases with the age of the star, and furthermore that the lithium levels do not behave differently in stars with known planets. Relatively low levels of lithium are found in our Sun, compared to other Sun-like stars, and there has been much debate about the reason for the difference. One possible explanation is that the presence of planets, as found in our Solar System, may be linked with reduced levels of lithium in the host star. Such a link was indicated in research also done with ESO’s ...

28 July 2010: ESO has signed a large contract to deliver sodium lasers for the new Adaptive Optics Facility for the Very Large Telescope at Paranal. Laser guide stars are used as part of adaptive optics equipment to help telescopes correct for atmospheric effects. This new facility will let astronomers make sharper observations, over more of the sky and in a broader range of conditions than is possible at present. Following a competitive design study, ESO has awarded the contract to build the lasers to Toptica Photonics AG, a German laser manufacturer. The lasers will be based on a novel Raman fibre amplification technology developed by the Laser Systems Department at ESO. This allows the lasers to be lighter, cheaper, more compact and more reliable than would be possible with competing technologies. Laser guide stars work by projecting a powerful laser beam to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The beam excites the ...

26 July 2010: A video compilation of footage showing the recoating of a mirror at ESO’s Very Large Telescope array (VLT) has now been released. The VLT, on Cerro Paranal in Chile, is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. It is the world's most advanced optical telescope, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors 8.2 metres in diameter and four movable 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes. This video compilation shows the different stages of the complex recoating process for one of the VLT’s giant main mirrors. The footage captures the moment when the mirror is brought out of the telescope and transported to a dedicated mirror maintenance plant. Here, the mirror is separated from its supporting cell, cleaned and finally recoated. The compilation features many timelapse sequences of the whole operation.

22 July 2010: A new video compilation of footage of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is available. ALMA is an international astronomy facility, supported by Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Under construction on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, ALMA will be a revolutionary observatory, composed initially of 66 high precision antennas designed to study some of the coldest and most distant objects in the Universe. This video compilation visits the different facilities that belong to the extensive ALMA observatory. The footage, obtained in early 2010, includes sequences of some antennas at an altitude of 5000 metres on the Chajnantor plateau, as well as the assembly and testing of antennas at a lower altitude, at the Operations Support Facility. Further material shows astronomers during the commissioning and science verification phase.